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Escape From Alcatraz Ken Widner

The Alcatraz prison escape on the night of June 11th, 1962 is arguably the most famous escape in American history. It was the subject of the 1979 movie Escape From Alcatraz where Clint Eastwood played Frank Morris, one of the three escapees.

Alcatraz was an island prison in San Francisco Bay that was considered escape proof. If a prisoner did somehow manage to escape the prison itself, he would certainly be killed by the fearsome currents that surround the isolated island, it was thought.

In this revealing interview Ken Widner, a relative of the Anglin brothers who escaped along with Frank Morris, describes how they escaped from Alcatraz and successfully made it to Brazil. He describes how they made it off the island by using utilizing the help one of the prison’s own boats, and how they were then flown to Mexico by Frank Brizzi in his plane, and later made their way to Brazil.

Brizzi, a former drug smuggler who has since died, has had his credibility called into question. However, Widner reveals that he knows of another person still alive who was on that plane and confirms the story of the flight to Mexico in Brizzi’s plane of the escapees.

Furthermore, evidence exists of a photo of the Anglin Brothers in Brazil in the 1970s. The family also has letters and Christmas greetings, and substantial additional material which has not been released which documents that the Angelins were successful in their escape through the contact they had with their family.

Finally, Widner discusses the continued harassment that he says he faces to this day from an embarrassed US Government still determined to capture his relative’s more then half a century after the escape.